Refined Teenage Angst

It’s My Problem, It’s My Problem…

I like very tough girls for a very soft person. I wonder if all my lyrical role models are as timid as I am when they’re not singing. Maybe, just like me, they can never find the right words in the moment to defend themselves and come back 100 times stronger on paper (digital or otherwise). I’m tired of agreeing with artists that a “fallback” is just accepting the possibility that I may fail, and agreeing with everyone else that I should invest all my energy into my “fallback” after a year or so of trying this out. Why are people so insistent on forcing their own path onto me? Further to the point, why can’t I tell people, “it’s not my problem if you don’t see what I see”, with as much conviction as Marina and The Diamonds sings it on “Are You Satisfied?”.

Of course I’m terrified of failure. My ego is incredibly frail, so believe me I’ve spent the better part of my life wondering if I’m really good enough to “make it”. Every time I’ve lost any sort of competition or even made second place, I’ve taken it harder than a breakup and contemplated quitting. And I cannot stand the idea of being a grown woman without a sustainable income because I’ve spent all my time putting everything into something that gave me nothing in return.

So yes, I want a “fallback”. But I don’t even consider my “fallback” a “fallback”, because it’s not something that I’ll pursue if the first choice doesn’t come through in 2 or so years. It’s something I’ll pursue the whole way through. It’ll financially sustain me and my dream so I don’t have to rely on my parents or work an uninspiring part time job.

But no I will not give up on my dream in a few years, because I’m not satisfied with an average life. I don’t necessarily need to be rich and famous, I used to need that, but I’ve grown. However, I do need to make music and perform to be happy. And it needs to be more than just a hobby, a hobby is just something to relieve you of the stress of real life, and I’m not relegating music to that. I need to be fulfilled for more than a few hours a week. You don’t need to understand that, but you do need to stop asking me to explain it to you.

I want to listen to people’s advice, but I want the bravery to tell them all of this as well. The problem is that it often feels like I’m not being taken seriously. Maybe that’s because you can just smell the fear on me, or because they don’t think I’m very talented, or because they are just the type to think they know better than everyone else. So from now on, this is what I’ll tell them: it’s my problem, it’s my problem that I never will succeed.